


Phobos Ascendant

by marxist_monke



Category: Castlevania (Cartoon)
Genre: A little Lovecraftian horror, Actually Alucard does too, Everyone is bad at talking about their emotions, F/M, M/M, Multi, Season 3 compliant, Sypha can be a bit of a bully, but Trevor seems like the type to be passive agressive
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-14
Updated: 2021-01-21
Packaged: 2021-03-18 18:01:49
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,500
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28747365
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/marxist_monke/pseuds/marxist_monke
Summary: When Sypha and Trevor return from their travels to the castle, Alucard is nowhere to be found, and two humans are staked out in front of the castle. In the wood, some creature born of dread stakes a claim.
Relationships: Alucard | Adrian Tepes | Arikado Genya/Trevor Belmont, Alucard | Adrian Tepes | Arikado Genya/Trevor Belmont/Sypha Belnades, Trevor Belmont/Sypha Belnades
Comments: 4
Kudos: 35





	1. Alucard

**Author's Note:**

> Look, this is a WIP. I make no promises, I suck at finishing projects that I can't hammer out in one night. If you have an aching need for things to be finished, please know I have an outline thats, like, two sentences long. You're welcome to come back later and see if I actually finish this thing.

Adrian lurks around the castle less like a wolf and more like a stray dog. He doesn’t quite peek around corners as he crosses doorways, but he doesn’t exactly stride with confidence either. He takes his meals with his back to something solid, always eating quickly. 

It is difficult to remember to eat. He takes to foraging about the pantries. Eats nothing but oatmeal until the bag runs out and then takes to millet porridge. Once, on a Sunday (his mother had loved Sundays, had made oatcakes and honey just for the two of them Sunday mornings) he goes fishing and makes himself a proper meal, with wild mushrooms and rosemary from the garden and some salvageable carrots from the cellar. It smells amazing as it bakes in the brick oven, and Adrian sets the table. When he fetches it from the oven, he takes stock of his hard work and notices he’d set the table for three. 

One seat for him and two for his parents. Or two for Trevor and Sypha. Or two for Taka and Sumi. 

Adrian finds rot in the bottom of his millet bag the next day, and switches to stale blood when his hunger becomes too unbearable, but forsakes food entirely. 

Outside the two corpses decay on spikes. Adrian considers burying the remains then discards the idea. It’s hardly worth the effort. Time will turn them to skeletons and then to dust. 

He wanders the halls and makes mental notes of projects that need doing. The ruts on the staircase to the dungeons need replacing. The windows in the second ballroom need new weatherproofing. The fourth kitchen in the west wing had some kind of sentient mold that’s taken hold there- probably the result of one of his parents' scientific experiments- and it needs handling. Adrian makes his lists and then putters about, attending to none of them. He avoids the Belmont hold entirely. 

He reads. Forgets what he’s read. Tries reading more, only to discover he’s already read those books. Gives up. Takes to sleeping until noon and then past that. He can hear his father chide him for laziness, Trevor refer to him as a spoiled lordling and Sumi ask if it is common for Dhampir to have sleeping habits similar to vampires. Adrian gives up on a schedule entirely. 

On the second month, after he’d slit the throats of his lovers/friends/students and mounted their bodies on poles, Adrian hears voices coming from the entryway. At first, he freezes, straining to listen. Then fetches his sword. 

Adrian pads through the halls on bare feet, rocking from heel to toe so as not to make a sound. He keeps close to the walls and in the shadows. Halfway to the voices up ahead, the ridiculousness of it all dawns on him. He is a powerful vampire in his own domicile, creeping about like a child trying not to get caught with a hand in the sweets jar. Adrian breathes in deeply. Shifts. Feels his physical form melt into nothingness and he becomes the mist. 

Things are fizzier in this form. Sensation filled like he’s handling an object through thick wool gloves. Hearing muted as if someone is speaking through a door. Even the colors are dulled. But something about being air makes scent especially strong. As he rolls and sways forward, he catches the scent of human skin in need of a wash. Horsehair. Stale bread. Leather. The acrid smell of raw magic. Silver. 

He reels back, the shock slamming him back into his corporeal form. Adrian bares his teeth and raises the sword. He’s ready this time.

And then he catches their voices. 

“Honestly Trevor, it is not so hard to do. You begin by creating mental discipline. It’s called meditation. I’ll show you.” 

Hearing her voice is like being slapped across the face. She sounds exactly as she did- well it was only a few months ago but it feels like years. She sounds happy. Confident. Ready to take on the world. 

“All the foreign mumbo jumbo in the world isn’t going to change the fact that magic was bred out of the Belmont line generations ago. You want Alucard for this conversation.” Trevor’s voice now, just as world-weary but also amused. More open to laughter. Adrian feels hate boil up in his gut like an illness, the force of it surprising him. All this time, he’d never blamed Trevor or Sypha. 

Alucard turns on his heel and flees.


	2. Trevor

Trevor is hungry and worried and tired and mostly done with Sypha’s grouchy attitude. She seems to have taken Lindenfield personally in a way he just can’t, and had decided that the only way to recompense is to forge herself into a weapon that can shatter any army that comes before it. 

Trevor just wants to rest. 

“Come on! Concentrate Trevor!” She chides for the fiftieth time. Inwardly he groans, while outwardly he folds his hands into the complex patterns yet again. 

If there’s one thing Trevor can’t bear more than these futile exercises, it’s dragging her down to his level. But God above he wants a rest. 

Obviously, the rock he’s supposed to be levitating doesn’t move. If anything, he thinks it anti-levitates. Becomes slightly more rooted in place. Maybe some moss starts growing. 

“You’re not concentrating!” Sypha growls at him, balling her hands up into tiny fists. He stands abruptly, turning to shriek back that he is bloody well fucking concentrating but he doesn’t have magic running thicker than blood in his veins like her and can she lay off because he wants to sleep for five god for damn minutes so if she could just please shut up and let him. 

And he catches the desperation in her eyes. The edge of panic in her voice. 

Trevor breaths in, feeling the bite of the cool autumn air in his lungs. Breaths out again. Remembers her eyes, filled with horror at the burnt out husks of houses. Remembers bandaging her hands, bloodied and blistered after the fourth day of digging graves at Lindenfeld. Remembers how she hadn’t cried, just bit her lip until blood had welled up and spilt from her lips. 

“I promise I am. But… please Sypha. A break?” He asks gently. She throws back her shoulders in that mulish way that tells him to prepare for an argument and seems to catch herself. 

“Fine.” She answers. “A break. So we can look for Alucard.”

Trevor sighs in relief. 

“If you don’t come out I’m going to start pissing in that fifth ballroom!” Trevor yells into the unending corridor. It echoes, bouncing off halls. He snickers softly that the word that seems to carry the best is “pissing”. 

He doesn’t exactly wait with bated breath, but it’s a little disappointing that Alucard doesn’t appear, looking both cross and imperious, to inform him of the proper location of a privy. He’d love to be able to run back to Sypha and tell her that the best way to bring a vampire out of hiding is to threaten to pee on things. 

Actually, he’s beginning to doubt that Alucard is actually here. Trevor is a seasoned tracker. The telltale signs of a living creature are minimal, but they are here. The emptied bag of bran, the disturbed dust in the halls, the charcoal in the third kitchen cooking pit. All of these are signs of someone having been here. But the nagging voice at the back of his mind that sounds an awful lot like his Uncle Leonard, who’s trained him in tracking, is asking questions. Does a half-vampire even need to eat? Are the signs of habitation really the trail of his quarry, or some passer through? And most importantly, what are two fucking corpses doing on the lawn?

But he presses on. The unsealed wine bottles with remnants of blood inside have to mean something. And refuses, completely delusional, utterly hopeless sure, but refuses to believe that Alucard is dead. 

On the fourth day at the castle, he takes down the corpses. They’re long past smelling, but they’re disturbing to look at. And every time Sypha walks past them she runs through the same list of questions. Who does he think they were? Where were they from? Who killed them? Why? 

So he takes a hatchet he’d found in a room of half rusted gardening tools and cuts down the spikes. He wraps the bodies in fine linen sheets that he’d looted from one of the million bedrooms in the castle and wraps each up. Throws them in the cart and buries them a ways off in the forest, with simple wooden markers. It only takes the lesser part of a morning. With all the recent practice in grave digging and burials, he’s gotten fast at it. 

Trevor laughs darkly to himself as he tamps the earth down on the larger grave. Maybe he can retire from monster hunting and become an undertaker. 

When Sypha comes back, she has twigs scattered through her hair, a torn sleeve, and a wild look in her eyes. Trevor nearly groans. She hasn’t been sleeping lately, has been getting up until the middle of the night to just “check the castle for a few moments” and then returning to bed hours later. The area under her eyes is starting to be permanently purplish. 

“I saw him!” Sypha crows. “I saw him in the woods!”

“Oh?” He asks. She’d sworn she’d seen him the first day too, but when Trevor had followed her the hallway had been empty. 

“Well it wasn’t him for sure, but it was a white wolf! And he can shapeshift!” She exclaims. Trevor shuffles to his feet and takes her worn, chapped little hands in his large ones. As per usual, they’re a touch too warm, heated by her own internal fire. 

“Sypha” he starts, unsure. She’s been driven like a madwoman since they left Lindenfeld. “We can’t be certain. White’s not exactly a rare color for wolves.” She scowls and snatches her hands away from him. Trevor shivers, missing their heat already. 

“Yes, it was him!” She insists. “It was too large to be a normal wolf. It had to be him!” 

Trevor pauses for a moment. Maybe. But the feeling of hope in his chest is fleeting. Mostly he just feels heavy. 

“Did you see which way he went?” he asks. She frowns and shakes her head. 

“Well alright then. Maybe it was him. But for now” Trevor leans forwards and plucks a stick from her hair “God it feels good to get to turn this one on you. You need a bath, wood nymph.” 

Sypha snorts, affronted and turns a childish pout on him. For the first time in a week, Trevor feels the leaden thing in his chest unclench just a bit.  
“I need a bath? Me? That is so rich, coming from you Trevor Belmont!” She points an accusatory finger and jabs him with it. Trevor catches her hand and kisses her knuckles, then wrinkles his nose theatrically. 

“And soap.” He adds. He runs before Sypha can throw hail at him. 

They end up finding a massive tub on the fifth floor, sunken into the floor and made of the most beautiful marble. Sypha squalls in delight. 

“It is the color of honey!” She says excitedly, gesturing to the massive tub. Before he can stop his mind can halt it, his tired tongue gets out ahead of him. 

“It’s called Mykalissos gold. It’s quarried in Greece.” His voice sounds strangely rough to his own ears. 

Sypha turns in place, her eyes bright with a thirst for knowledge. 

“How do you know that? Why ‘gold’ when it is closer in color to daisies?” 

Trevor shrugs awkwardly. 

“Noble born, remember? I had an aunt who wanted us to learn all sorts of ways to be snobbish about other people's homes.” 

Sypha snickers. 

“She sounds like a delight, this aunt. Did she also insist you learn about which little spoon to use?” 

Trevor grins crookedly. 

“Yes. Aunt Justinia. And in her memory, I think it’s only fair to mention that she also made sure each of the children knew how to nail a fly to the wall with a crossbow at a hundred paces.”

Sypha nods approvingly. 

“I retract my recrimination. Now, bath.”

Trevor is going to ask her how, exactly, they are going to get the tons of water up here to fill this massive tub, not to mention heat it, when Sypha twists her hand in a weaving like gesture and mutters the word for ‘steam’ and ‘form’ he now recognizes in Enochian. A second later a gentle rain is pattering down into the massive tub, and the air is considerably warmer. Right. Magician.

“I’ll leave you to it then.” He kisses the top of her head and turns to go, only to be stopped by her fingers tugging gently at his ear in a way that’s both reprimand and reward. 

“Oh no, Belmont! My arms are far too sore, you’re getting my back. Besides” Sypha sniffs haughtily. Despite the mud in her hair and tattered robe, she could put a duchess to shame. “I will not be seeing to my cleanliness without you also doing so. Clothes off!” She orders as if giving a command to charge the enemy lines at full gallop. Trevor grins and obeys. 

She’s a goddamn minx, his Sypha. Trevor really does appreciate how much she seems to hate playing coy- she’s always direct in her communications with him. Kiss me here. Touch me like this, no, like this. He doesn’t have to guess to know how to please her, moans will spill from her lips when he’s right and instructions will tumble forth if he’s wrong. 

He’s gotten better at guessing right. Trevor digs a thumb firmly into the arch of her foot and is rewarded with a long, pornographic moan. 

“Oh yes yes yes that.” She murmurs and slides low in the water. Trevor makes small circles on her heel and then gently runs his fingers if the top of her foot, to circle one of her delicate ankles. Features like a porcelain doll, this woman, and a spine like forged steel. 

Trevor traded to her other foot. 

“It has been far too long since I’ve thoroughly debauched you.”’ Sypha grumbles, startling a laugh out of him. 

“It’s been a rough few weeks.” He answers back. She wriggles her toes out of his grasp. Sits herself up out of the water and stares him down with resplendent blue eyes. Naked and standing in waist-high water, Trevor thinks to himself that she makes a far better image than any sculpture of Venus. She’s overly thin in a way that he can see the line of her rib cage as it runs down from her clavicle. Her breasts are small, her shape decidedly more pear than hourglass. She doesn’t quite have his tapestry of scars, but is still putting together a story in her body; Dracula’s claw marks are still an angry red on her shoulder and she’s added a Rusalka’s bite to her forearm and some nasty pockmark scars from sliding a couple of dozen yards on gravel when she’d failed a step in her ice running spell. 

God, she’s beautiful. This tiny woman will consume him like wildfire upon the dry brush. 

“I am never going to fail people like that again.” She declares. Trevor sighs and wades across the tub, to pull her against his chest. She rocks in the water before letting him scoop her up. The top of her head catches the scruff on his chin. 

He wants to tell her it was his failure. He’s the monster hunter. Should have seen the signs, should have known what they were looking at. Shouldn’t have distracted her with kisses. This isn’t fair- failure and obsession and wraith, these are supposed to be the thumbscrews he drives into his own body, not hers. 

“Never again.” She huffs against his chest. At least he’s kept the bitterness and despair to himself. Trevor can’t picture her tiny face weathered by bitterness and despair. Won't. 

But he doesn’t know how to put it all into words, his adoration, his fear, his concern at the purple lines under her eyes. So he kisses the top of her head and rubs her back and holds her in the warm water. 

Dinner is badly burnt and extremely lean wild hare with a grass that Sypha insists is wild onion but Trevor od pretty sure is just grass. They chew slowly, careful of bones and gristle. 

“You sure you can’t conjure up a magic meal?” 

Sypha rolls her eyes. 

“It doesn’t work like that Trevor! A thing conjured from nowhere has diminishing effects in contrast to the real object. And I specialize in elemental evocation, not material conurbation. Which you would know if you paid attention in your lessons!”

Trevor signs and sinks lower against his log. 

“I pay attention.” 

“Oh? Then what is the school of magic used for protective spells, Belmont?” She snipes back. 

Trevor chews at the rabbit thigh and bites back a response asking her to categorize the fifteen varieties of Vukodlak that can be found in the western hills of Romania because she had her specialties but he had his god damn it. 

“Abjur… abjudication?” He guesses. Sypha snorts into her dinner. 

“Abjuration, Trevor. Honestly.” 

Trevor shrugs and just concentrated on pulling more meat off the bone. It had been this way when he was a child too. Always struggling with oral lectures or recitations, written words or pictures had been far easier for him. But Sypha insists that this is how she’d been taught, so he can learn this way. 

Not that he can. Time and again he’s explained. The Belmonts don’t have magic. It’s useless though. She insists he try again and again, despite the impossibility. 

“I’m going to check the hold tomorrow.” He offers instead. “Maybe, even if he’s gone off somewhere, we’ll have hints to where. The home has all sorts of maps and manuals. We might catch a trail.” 

“Yes.” Sypha nods assuredly. “And, I can go through the spell books down there, that one of your ancestors must have used!” She points accusingly, almost jabbing him in the chest. Trevor snatched her hand up and presses a kiss to her palm. A dog with a bone this one. 

“Alright Sypha.” He indulges. “We can look for spellbooks too.”

The door to the vault has been well oiled recently. It opens with barely a squeal of complaint. Cold air billows out from the underground to great them, along with the smells of damp earth, wood rot, and the fresh-cut pine. Trevor goes to light a torch when Sypha merely holds her palm up, summoning a flame to it. 

Right. Magician. 

The walk into the vault is somber. Sypha lights a torches as she goes, bringing a dim glow to the underground. Trevor dogs her heels, hackles on edge. Some sixth sense is telling him they’re being watched from the shadows and he doesn’t like it. 

“Oh! He repaired the staircase! Alucard has been down here!” Sypha grasps his sleeves and points excitedly at the new struts and joists connecting the damaged portion of the stairs. Trevor leans forward and examines the work. It’s not bad, but Alucard had used fresh pine rather than dried boards. They'll shrink once they’re properly dried out, causing problems with how he’d cut the struts. Trevor frowns. Waste of good nails, but judging by the freshness of the lumber, this was done within the last six months. It’s the first real lead they’ve had on any presence about the grounds or castle. 

“Alucard!” He tries calling out. “Come on out, vampire!” His voice echoes down the pit, bouncing off walls and fading out. As he’d expected, no answer. 

“What are we looking for exactly?” Trevor asks her. Sypha lazily casts her hand out and sets another wall sconce alight. 

“Books on dimensional transport. Here, I’ll write down the translations for you in Greek and Arabic. You read Latin, right?” Sypha doesn’t bother to check, she was already scribbling him a note. 

“Let me know if you come across anything Trevor. I’m checking the floor below.” Sypha absentmindedly kisses his cheek, and before he can stop her, she’s vaulting over the railing to let a summoned breeze carry her lower. 

Trevor pulls his cloak close against the draft and tries his best not to make grumbly noises of complaint. He’s worried. Horribly worried. He’s kept it well enough from Sypha, because she’s been a frantic mess these last few days, but Alucard is missing. He knows she’s searching through the shelves right now for spells of tracking and divination. She doesn’t talk about how he’s gotten up every night to pace the castle, just one more time. But what can they do? They’ve not seen a strand of gold hair or wisp of elegant disdain since returning. He’s well and truly gone. Trevor runs a hand through shaggy brown hair and tries to press down on the tingly, numb sensation climbing its way up his throat with treacherous little fingers. He reaches the end of the shelves to find Leon Belmont’s imperious portrait staring down at him. A hint of disgust curls his ancestor’s lip. When he’d been a child, his mother had said that their ancestor hated having to sit still long enough for a portrait, but Trevor can’t help but feel it's directed on a more personal level. 

“Yeah, well fuck you too.” He mutters. The air in here is chilling his bones. 

“Sypha!” He calls over the railing. “I’m headed up for a bit. I’ll meet you back at the campsite.” 

From deep within the stacks he gets a muffled affirmative. Trevor turns on his heel, and walks back up the staircase, into the daylight. 

The sun warms his frozen fingers and toes. The air is fresh with forest scents. Trevor drops his cloak by the small pile of traveling gear by the cart and checks in on the ponies, running a pick over their feet and re-tethering them near fresh grass. He makes certain the ropes are long enough that the ponies can reach the water trough and briefly considers the difficulty of building an enclosed paddock. 

Nah. Even shoddily built, it will take weeks just to chop all the wood. 

He heads into the forest, mostly just to walk off the chill from the vault, but keeping an eye out for dinner. The pickings seem unusually sparse, with no real tracks to follow. Probably something to do with being on cursed land, right next to Dracula’s castle. Oh, and maybe the two bodies rotting on pikes. 

Trevor pushes the panic back down. 

The forest is warm. There’s sure to be dinner somewhere about here, even if it’s a very anemic deer. Besides, the fall leaves are beautiful. 

The only warning he gets is the slight prickle on the back of his neck. Trevor doesn’t even think, just drops to the ground and looses his whip in one clean movement. 

Silence. Trevor lifts his head slowly. At first, he thinks maybe it’s a false alarm, or perhaps a deer had stepped on something wrong and set him off. Then he sees it, through a frame of Alder tree branches. A thin, spindly creature. It has too many joints at its elbows, and its physical presence is… awkward. Like it’s standing in mist, even though the afternoon sun is clear. Whatever it is, it doesn’t seem to have seen him yet. Trevor racks his brain, frustration mounting as an answer doesn’t spring to mind. Hours, days, spend being drilled repeatedly, his hands clasped behind his back, reciting the bestiary A through Z. What is this thing? 

Trevor grinds his teeth and shifts from flat on the ground to a crouch. Maybe he can make it out of the forest, to the line of trees that lead to the castle? Despite the success against Dracula’s hordes, night creatures are easily identified and easily killed. Without knowing what this thing is, he’d rather not take it on, especially with Sypha absent and unaware. The creature shifts forwards, it’s uneven head swiveling from right to left. Trevor squints. It looks like it’s got something cornered. He edges forwards, careful of the placement of his boots amongst the fall leaves, making certain not the give away his position. 

A massive white wolf is snarling at the monster, it’s tail tucked between its legs. Its eyes are bright, and gold. Filled with intelligence. 

Sypha always teases him that he never looks before he leaps, never thinks things through, and acts on instinct. He always grumbles back that he does look, and even think, thank you very much. It’s a considered decision of a split second, as he crouches there amongst the leaves. That’s Alucard. That’s a monster. The math is simple. Trevor cracks his whip. 

“Hey, you ugly piece of shit!” He calls and snaps upwards with the chain of the Morningstar. He catches the thing between the shoulder and torso and then it turns to look at him. LoOk At HIM. Trevor reels with nausea as it’s hollow not-there eyes meet his. Its features are completely indeterminate, but they bring to mind the primal disgust of maggots and rotten food and squirming things. The urge to wretch nearly overtakes him and Trevor stumbles. 

The creature cackles- in pain, in fear, he’s not sure. Its entire mass is writhing in ecstasy or pain, Trevor’s not sure but he has to break twenty years of training and instinct to just look away. Just look anywhere else. When he looks up again, the thing is gone. Trevor bounds across the forest detritus, clearing a small bush and nimbly skipping over several ensnaring roots. He puts his back to Alucard, trusting the vampire to have his flank while he scans for the creature. Over his shoulder, he calls out. 

“Found you, you wily bastard! You injured? Did it get you?” 

Alucard doesn’t answer. He only gets a snarl in return. 

Trevor scans the trees one more time, but the thing, whatever it was, seems to have slunk off somewhere. The sounds of the forest are filtering back in. The squirrels seem particularly upset. Trevor turns slowly, keeping one eye on the trees. 

“Alright asshole, the silent treatment? What did I do to deserve this?” But Alucard simply snarls, still a wolf. His hackles are raised, in fact, every hair on his body is raised. His tail is tucked tight under him and he’s crouching low. Trevor notices how gaunt he looks and the look in his eyes is still that of an intelligent animal, but wild. Driven mad with fear. 

“Woah there. Take it easy. It’s just me, your lordship.” Trevor stows the Morningstar and reaches forwards with an open hand. 

Alucard lunges.


End file.
